


Sixteen Sunrises

by nottonyharrison



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: A lot of Echo feels, Angst, Character Study, Echo centric, F/M, Post s07e07 flashback scene, Spacekru fic, The Ring Years, shower shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:30:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25050151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nottonyharrison/pseuds/nottonyharrison
Summary: She’s learned about it over the last three years - the void of space. She’s learned about the materials that have gone into building the ring, and she still doesn’t trust the quartz glass that lets them see the emptiness that surrounds them. But with his firm warm body pressing against hers, his sweat damp skin, and his words ringing in her ears for a moment she let herself feel safe.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Echo
Comments: 10
Kudos: 37





	Sixteen Sunrises

When Echo looks back on that kiss, it makes her squirm in her rack. Bellamy’s hands in her hair, the scratch of his stubble against her palms, the gentle pressure of his teeth as he bit her lip and the soft grunt he made as she dug her fingers into his cheek.

The swell she felt in her chest when he pressed her up against the window, a few inches of glass the only thing separating her from the stars.

She’s learned about it over the last three years - the void of space. She’s learned about the materials that have gone into building the ring, and she still doesn’t trust the quartz glass that lets them see the emptiness that surrounds them. But with his firm warm body pressing against hers, his sweat damp skin, and his words ringing in her ears for a moment she let herself feel safe.

And then the moment was broken by Raven screaming out for her, yelling about a promise to help move some crates, and Echo was scrambling for her words and clambering down from the hard metal bench.

He’d grabbed her arm and given her this  _ look _ that said more than she wanted to hear, and all she could do was run her hand down his face and turn away, heart hammering and heat flushing across her cheeks.

She hasn’t seen Bellamy since. That was yesterday though, and today is today. Or is it? She’s still not used to the artificial time created by the light cycles and sixteen sunrises of what’s become an ordinary twenty-four hours.

It is one too. An ordinary day. She gets up and goes for a run, two laps around the ring until she’s hot and sticky. She eats breakfast and laughs at Murphy’s snarking and Monty’s indignation. She finds Emori and they spend an hour hitting each other with pieces of pipe insulation they’d scavenged from one of the utility closets.

At one point Emori gets the upper hand and as Echo looks up at her from the floor, she shakes her head and says Monty’s algae has given her a stomach ache. She accepts the offered arm, and hoists herself up. “I’m gonna… go for a shower.”

Emori claps a hand on her shoulder and raises an eyebrow. “Good, you stink.”

Echo screws up her nose. “You, my friend, do not smell any better than me.”

“Yeah well I’ve got to go crawl around in a ventilation shaft so you should be glad you’re standing next to me now and not in a few hours.”

Echo laughs and says goodbye. She’s about to turn into the corridor that leads to her quarters when Emori’s voice rings out, bouncing off the hard metal walls.

“They love you. You know that right?”

Echo pauses, running her hand down the wall and glances back.

“ _ I  _ love you,” Emori continues. “And yes, things would have been different on the ground, but we’re not there, and you need to stop telling yourself that this will all be over in a couple of years because  _ you _ are not defined by your leaders. You’re warm and funny and kind, and you’re seingeda.”

“I… don’t know what to say to that.” Her face is set in carefully practised stoicism, but she can feel her hands trembling.

Emori smiles and picks up the foam weapons from the floor. “You don’t need to say anything.”

Echo watches her leave, flipping and spinning the makeshift weapons as she goes, and lets the indifference shift into a small smile for just a moment.

…

He’s naked apart from the threadbare towel wrapped around his hips. She’s standing in the doorway clutching a change of clothes, the  _ klang _ of the door hitting the wall as she’d jostled her way through still ringing in her head.

“ _ Jok, _ Bellamy put some clothing on or lock the door.”

He leans back over the basin and scrapes the razor over his chin. “Never bothered you before”

Echo shivers, the memories of Mount Weather lingering before all the other times since take over. Flashes of three years worth of him in next to nothing flick through her mind, until she’s biting down on her tongue and pressing her lips together. She stomps over to the row of lockers and drops her stuff on the bench.  _ Before _ , she thinks. Before what? Before he kissed her? Before she started feeling weird every time he smiled at her, or before her heart started pounding every time he had her pinned to a mat wrongly thinking she was about to tap out?

There’s a sigh from behind her, and her hand pauses on the handle of her locker. “I didn’t… um.” He makes a  _ tsk _ sound with his tongue and stops as if he’s thinking. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t, Bellamy I just-”

“No, let me finish.” There’s a clatter as he drops the razor and she turns around slowly, eyes sliding over his hunched shoulders and white knuckles gripping the steel sink. Her eyes meet his in the mirror, and she bites the inside of her cheek. “If I made you uncomfortable-”

“Shof op.”

“I’m sorry, I misread you and that’s made things weird-”

“Shof  _ op _ .”

They stand there for a while, gazes still locked in the mirror, something unsaid hanging in the air.

Echo hangs her head and picks at her cuticles. “You didn’t misread me. I don’t want you to... “ She lets out a heavy sigh and looks up at the ceiling. “I meant what I said last night. We’re in this bubble where it’s easy to mistake need for feelings and I don’t want you to feel like you have to…” she struggles to find the right word and she presses her lips together. “I don’t know,  _ please _ me? I don’t know the way to say it in Gonasleng but you get the idea. I know how you felt about Clarke, I’ve been there. I've lost someone I loved and I made the mistake of trying to use someone else to fill the empty space in my heart. It never ends well.”

“I’m not  _ using _ you, fuck I’m-”

She lets out a sharp bark of laughter and looks back at him, head cocked to the side. “Moba, wrong word choice.”

“This has nothing to do with Clarke or anyone else down there. This has to do with  _ you  _ and  _ me _ .” He pushes away from the mirror and turns around. “And yeah, I’ve been angry. I resisted trusting you until so  _ so recently _ , and for months I didn’t know if I’d made the right choice stopping you from going full seppuku in that lab but I realise now I was  _ wrong _ .”

“Seppuku?” Echo screws her brows up in confusion and Bellamy winces.

“Sorry that was a… really terrible joke it doesn’t matter.” He takes in a visible breath and lets it out slowly. “I don’t understand how I feel about you, I don’t. I know it’s not the same as anyone else, not Clarke or even Octavia it’s just  _ not _ .”

‘Bellamy I…”

He steps towards her and presses his hands against her cheeks. “It’s something I’ve never felt before. When I look at you I see your strength and determination and intelligence and  _ loyalty _ all wrapped up in this frankly fucking gorgeous package that I just want to touch all the time and it makes me just  _ ache _ .” His thumb slides across her cheek and her eyes flick down to his lips before focussing on a point over his shoulder. “And yeah maybe I know exactly what it is and I don’t want to name it because of our history, but that’s beside the point because it’s been  _ years _ , Echo. And now that I’m finally ready to do something about it I don’t want you to say no just because you think you don’t deserve it.”

He drops his hands and steps away, reaching for his own locker and gathering his clothes. “I’ll get changed in my room.”

She watches him leave and he’s about to swing the door shut when her brain kicks into gear and she strides towards him, grabbing him by the shoulder and spinning him around. She slams the door with the other hand and flicks the lock before pressing him hard against the cold unyielding metal.

“I never said I didn’t deserve it.”

She sees his breath catch, and feels the squirm of his hips against hers, and when she crashes her lips to his the sound he makes crawls into her chest and wraps around her heart like a snake, squeezing and slithering until she feels like her ribcage is going to rip open.

There have been times in the past when she’s felt emotion doing this with other people. The flutter in her stomach, or a shiver running over her skin when someone has touched her in a way that made her feel needed. There’s something different about this though. Something different about the way she wants to crawl under Bellamy’s skin and stay there. Something different about how he touches her, how he caresses her face and tangles fingers in her hair that has her gasping into his mouth and pressing her palm against his shoulder until it slips off and hits the freezing steel behind him.

It’s in the way her lower lip stings when he sucks it between his teeth, and the electric tingli that runs through her abdomen when he pushes his hand between her pants and her hip. 

It’s in the way the words  _ I’ve never done this before _ want to spill from her lips, even though she has, many times and with many people, but this is something  _ different. _

And then suddenly she’s self conscious. She’s sweaty and gross from hours of exercise and a night of tossing and turning in her rack, and even though in the back of her mind she knows Bellamy doesn’t care and she never has before either, she hesitates and pulls back.

He rests his forehead against hers, and his breath is warm against her nose as he speaks. “You okay?”

She lets out a short huff, a laugh, and smiles. “Yeah I just really… need a shower.”

The corners of his eyes crinkle. “I can help you with that.”

That tingli from before is back, but this time it’s running up her spine until her brain is crackling like a campfire after the rain. “Yeah um… jok, yeah okay.”

Their legs tangle and clothes are shed as they stumble towards one of the stalls, and it’s not until she tugs his towel from around his waist that he pauses to undo her belt, and push her pants and underwear down at once that she realises she doesn’t want this to be tender and gentle, but rough and desperate.

It’s how she’s feeling. Like someone has taken a blade to her skin and scraped it raw until her emotions are seeping from it and getting on everything around her.

She clamps a hand around Bellamy’s chin and tilts his head around until he raises an eyebrow.

“Just checking.”

“For what?” His lips are tilted up in a half smile, and Echo runs her tongue over her lip. She steps back, and runs her eyes from his shoulders to his toes.

“Slash klin, bruises… defects.”

He bristles. “You making sure I’m  _ acceptable _ ?”

Echo’s gaze flicks back to his, and she runs her hand up his chest until her fingers clasp around his throat and he lets out a shuddering breath. “No, I just want to know the marks on your flesh are mine.” She loosens her grip and trails her short nails over his collarbone. “You trust me?”

The “Yes” is barely audible beneath the clatter of the narrow stall door slamming against the partition, and suddenly she’s pressed up against it, the reverse of their earlier position. He’s hoisted her up, she can feel his dick hard against her and she’s shivering before the automatic blast of cold water hits her body.

He keeps his promise, his hands run over her body until she’s slippery with soap and she has to drop her feet to the floor or end up on her ass. He kisses her with his hot, open mouth as he digs his fingers into her scalp, the shampoo forgotten for a moment.

His face is buried in her gadagapa, her legs wrapped around his neck and her hand gripping at the small moulded shelf when there’s a loud bang on the door. Bellamy freezes, but Echo rolls her hips. “Don’t you dare.”

_ “Echo!” _

_ “Sop?” _

_ “I need some help with reaching something in that vent!” _

Echo glances down, just as Bellamy presses two fingers into her and suddenly her head drops back and she groans.  _ “Get your boyfriend to do it. I need some alone time!” _

There’s a loud laugh from the other side of the.  _ “Sha ait, that’s fair just don’t use anything the rest of us need to touch!” _

She feels Bellamy’s shoulders shrug under her thighs as she tilts her lips down in an exaggerated thinking expression, and can’t help but let out a laugh as she hears Emori stomp off down the corridor.

When she wakes up the next morning, bleary eyed and mouth fuzzy and dry, his warm body pressed up against hers on the narrow mattress, she feels another emotion bubbling up in her chest, and she wonders if maybe this is happiness.

  
  


_ End. _

  
  



End file.
